


Darling, It's Better

by pajamaprodigy



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Demigod AU, M/M, injuries tw, merman Jean, merman au, war tw, ww1 au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-17 20:12:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1400971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pajamaprodigy/pseuds/pajamaprodigy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"there's a whole world down in the ocean<br/>filled with talking shrimp and boys who call you back<br/>but my breath won't hold long enough"<br/>~A Softer World #7</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darling, It's Better

How did an immortal come to understand death? It's a trick question: he didn't. He came to understand many things over the thousands of years, the way the patterns of the stars changed over the course of a year, a decade, a century, longer, and he came to understand the tides and currents and why storms formed primarily over warm water, and a little bit, a little, about the creatures that lived deeper under the sea than the humans had gone for a very long time, but he didn't spend much time there, because even though it didn't kill him when his bones were crushed and it didn't even take them that long to reform, he had no need to do it too frequently. He could always go later. And even though he understood that when some other child of Poseidon ate any cousin gilled creature, said creature would disappear into it's mouth in a cloud of blood, he supposed it would not be too long before it was just fine again, like him when he had been dashed against the rocks on the western coast of North America. He came to speak the languages, not just of the water and of his fellows there, but of the creatures on the shore or in their wood and metal bowls that floated on the surface. They looked like him above the waist, but below it they had legs where he had a tail. They were suited for the land and him for the water, and while he could see no gills on them, it did not occur to them that they would be unable to breathe in the water, that if they stopped breathing, as the result of submersion or as the result of Chlorine gas corrupting their lungs, it would end their lives.

Under the surface, there were vibrant colors, shifting lights, creatures without faces but with tentacles more beautiful than any face could be, shells that shone pink and green, little scuttling things, and animals that clung to the same rock their whole lives. There were emerald-colored forests of kelp that turned gold as they neared the sun, with urchins and crabs, bright purple and red, living amongst the roots. There were reefs where the young, vital, growing coral anchored themselves to their ancestors -- who could not be dead, merely old, he was old, millennia old, but he was not yet tired, and what else could they be but tired in a world where nothing ever died -- and released their descendants into the water above them, descendants who would come to live as they now did, atop those that came before. The bright fish who lived, lived, lived amongst them. The ocean's reach was vast and his arms and tail were strong: he could see all of these and more in the infinite time he had. This was all the world. There were no continents to him and the barrier of sand between him and the creatures of the land bothered him not at all. Why care for anything else when there was so much wonder here?

Also this: why should a child of Poseidon care who dies on land and how? Even if he had ever entertained the concept of death, applying this horror to creatures of another world would have meant little. They had come to the sea and fought there before, setting fire to each other's wood or armored ships, but from where he watched, when he had, it appeared they all returned home, shaken and humbled, but as alive as they had ever been. He did not enjoy seeing this, but he thought little of the masses of ships that fired upon each other here. He had never needed the deep to be his alone, and when the armored boats came to the oceans south of the fjords in August, he knew they would leave. They had been over his oceans before, and they could not harm him.

Also: why should a child of Poseidon care even when he is almost too close to the ship hit by some undersea hunk of metal shaped perfectly for its task of hurtling through the water and throwing fire through the hull of the carrier of some enemies? This question is not a trick: because one of the creatures from the land, built from above the waist like a brother would be, but beneath that having two appendages, wrapped in thick cloth like most of the people from the land were, but the cloth of his naval uniform had been burned away across his right side, and the burned and mutilated skin of his face, chest, and arm showed through, one of these creatures arrived directly before him as if some message from a god of war. The creature was just half conscious, struggling for breath, and trying and failing to lift himself to the surface. So he extended his arms beneath the creature from the land and lifted his head above the water. Deep, slow breaths, and then a whispered "Thank you, Jean."

He had no name. He had had no name, but now he did. Why that name, why that single syllable, left the other youth's mouth and attached itself to him he did not know. It was the first new thing he had, and it was his, given to him by a creature from the land. The creature from the land had been praying to the saint by that name, because who else but god could save him? He had never known there to be boys under the sea who would help because they didn't know that feeding him fish meant the fish would no longer be alive.

Jean fed the creature fish and aided him to drink, taking the water from the spines and eyes of the fish he fed him. He knew nothing of how to treat the wounds, for he had seen so little of fire, but he knew how to keep the creature's head above the water so that he could breathe, for even on the side of him that was unburned, he had no gills. He breathed only through his mouth and nose. Jean carried him on his back through the water, because the creature's injuries prevented him from swimming. The creature told Jean that his name was Marco and that he wanted to go back to the land. Even after being burned, he had a beautiful face. The parts of it that were still undamaged were covered in constellations of copper-colored speckles, and his remaining eye was a rich and warm brown.

Marco told Jean that on the land he had parents and a little brother and two little sisters. He told him this in French, though he had only learned French at school and a bit on the ship. At home, he spoke some other human language, one Jean had only rarely heard. Jean had been through the Agean, where his father was once worshipped and through the vast south of the Atlantic, and then he stayed a while off the coast of Newfoundland. He had been a while in Indonesia and a while in the gulf of Alaska. The island where Marco wished to return was one he had passed, but Jean had never really explored its waters. The love Marco bore for the place was odd to Jean; it had always seemed insignificant to him, and he told Marco so.

"That surprises me: a lot of ships come from England, and but you've still never cared for it," Marco had said.

"No. I just don't think I would find it interesting."

"Why not? England is a beautiful country."

"No more beautiful than the sea, surely," Jean said, smiling.

"Much more so, and there we have all kinds of art and science and literature and culture, and the people are so lovely. Doesn't it get lonely out here with only the fish for company?"

"No. And I still don't understand why you would want to go back."

"Still? My family is there. My king and queen are there. England is dear to me, dear to my heart. And I can't live out here."

"If you want to go back, don't worry, I'll take you. I just think England sounds rather dull."

"It isn't." Marco's voice remained gentle and soft, but something in it changed. "England is dear to me. I would die for England, and I would have if you hadn't saved me. And when I get back, I will serve England again after my recovery."

Jean did not understand why Marco's wounds had not healed yet.

"Thank you," Marco said again.

"You're welcome. And of course I'll take you home. I just don't think I'd like it there."

"You should visit though. You'll change your mind."

Jean learned many things about humans during the weeks he spent carrying Marco through the North Sea. He learned that humans needed to sleep, so he held Marco to his back by night, and because humans needed their heads to be kept above water, he was careful not to let Marco slip or sink. More difficult was the pain that human bodies felt. Jean had experienced discomfort when the weight of the water had broken his bones or the time that a wave caught him off guard and thrust him into the rocks, but it was nothing compared to what made Marco shudder and nearly fail to suppress a scream when the air touched his wounds or when they were resubmerged. He had indeed cried out and thrashed wildly, making the bleeding worse, when Jean had tried to hold his burned right arm. This was like nothing Jean had ever experienced, and to see it in another creature was utterly foreign to him, especially a creature as beautiful and strong as this one.

To pass the time as they neared Marco's home in England, Jean told Marco about the ocean and what he had seen beneath the water, about bright coral and floating jellies and forests of kelp and glowing fish in the deep. And Marco told Jean about the moor grass and the trees that grew along river banks and the horses that had lived on his grandparents' farm. Jean heard about human cities, full of horse carts and even cars, and buildings as tall as the ocean was deep, and machines that made millions of identical plates and shirtwaists, about bustling ports, and about guns and cannons and torpedoes like the one that had hit his ship. The waters were dangerous, full of mines and other cruel devices.

The water was cold as well. While cold was unpleasant for Jean, he could tell that it was much more so for Marco. And so Jean swam west with all his might, with Marco's good arm around his chest, carefully avoiding the shapes in the water below and keeping out of the path of the ships that could spot them or worse, run them over.

"You know I can't go ashore, right? So even if I visited England, I could only swim around it, and I should probably only swim at night."

"I know, and I'm sorry for it. But I would visit you at the shore," said Marco.

"You would?"

"If you would come."

"Of course I would. I have little else to do."

"Thank you, Jean."

The ocean was beautiful. Its colors were rich and deep and the light had a thicker and brighter quality. Under the ocean, there were fish of many sizes, shapes, and colors, and trees as tall as any on land, and bright little scuttling things, and things that glowed in the dark. Jean wished that Marco could stay. They could have been so happy together in the ocean. Jean supposed it would be much better than England, and there was much more to the whole sea than the water off the east coast of Great Britain. But this was his bridge between himself and the man he loved, and when Marco came back, Jean would persuade him to see more, so much more.

 

How does an immortal come to understand death? It's a trick question: he doesn't. He doesn't understand aging either. He doesn't understand Freudian defense mechanisms, that a man who nearly died in the ocean would avoid the sight of so much water that makes him feel weak, that a man who knows that in extremities, humans make up things that are not real to make it more bearable, who knows that mermen do not exist, who knows that there are no immortals, would later come to believe that he had imagined his rescuer. Nor does he understand the religion practiced by the humans of England, that a man who believed the God who saved his life, for he was certainly not carried so many hundreds of kilometers by a boy with the tail of a fish, would want him to live in a way that pleased Him perfectly, marrying a woman and having children and becoming a teacher and being a good father and grandfather and being buried far inland. Fortunately for the immortal, he neither understands time nor age. What is a human lifetime but the blink of an eye? He is sure that Marco, once he gets well enough and finishes serving England as he had promised to do, will come. He will wait. He has all the time in the world.


End file.
